On this page:
The Letter (standalone/possible prologue; vaguely Regency)
At Last Sight (standalone/possible prologue; tragedy)
Creature (standalone; horror-esque)
Inside and Out (possible Cinderella retelling; refers to Cinderella 2015)
Letting Go (standalone/part of a series of short pieces; trigger warning for referenced suicide methods)
In the Psych Ward (standalone/part of previous series of short pieces)
The Forest (standalone; horror-esque)
Friendship, Like A Mirror’s Shards (Vaniah’s story connected short story; on friendship)
Faith (Furnace of Hope universe; TRIGGER WARNING for depiction immediately post-suicide attempt)
Patience in Recovery (Patience stories; post-accident referred to in The Patience of Hope as a long past event, from Rhona’s POV)
A Summer Walk (standalone/part of a series of short pieces referred to above; trigger warning for contemplated suicide)
Accusation (standalone; dynamic concept)
Wounded (Patience stories; post-The Patience of Hope, largely Nathan/Patience stuff)
Vein (part of short series of pieces above; trigger warning for referenced self harm)
Ariadne (standalone)
The Letter
Project: N/A
Dates written: 05/08/2023
Date published: 05/08/2023
Word count: 493
It is you I think of all the day: you of whom I wonder when I lie down in bed, and you who dominate all my thoughts. You could never believe me indifferent to you, though you pretended so. I still remember the look on your face that last time, as you excused yourself at the dining table and left, promising to see me no more. You and I were beloved, once upon a time, but now, shall I ever hear another word of you? Those whom I love are afraid to mention your name in my presence. Yet I shall not break anything if I hear your name. I am beyond that. I have learned to care not.
It is not as if I have remained at home, doing needlework and pining after you: you must understand that, my once beloved. I think of you, and yet I have picked up the threads of my life as easily as you might pick up the reins of a horse, and ride off, and be done with it all. You may dismiss me, but I shall never dismiss you. The thought of you is always there, a silent companion in my every moment. But I love others; I have been courted, I have spoken to several fine gentlemen, and there are others I love.
But I shall always love you, in the secret places of my heart. Understand you this, that I make no plea for you to return it. You have said before that once wronged you shall always hold that grudge. And now you are gone and never to come back. But you must know that my love for you is forever, no matter who we each may end by marrying or befriending. You cannot be ignorant of it.
It is with all my love, and I may say, God be with you, that I close this letter. God go with you, you who were and are and ever shall be my first love.
She laid down the pen, feeling wonderfully comforted by the writing. He would never see it, of course, and she would burn it presently. In a more affluent household, she would have had a candle by which she could destroy it immediately, but there were no candles at this time of day to be had.
There came a cry from outside the room, calling her, and she gathered her skirts and hastened to answer it. Her brother had need of her skills with the children, and as a guest in this house she must answer his summons.
She had addressed the letter, in order to make it feel more like she was truly writing him, and all that remained (were it a letter truly meant for him) was to seal it; a few moments later Cecilia entered the room, and saw it. She picked it up, and put it in her pocket, to put in the post later.
At Last Sight
Project: N/A
Dates written: 28/09/2023
Date published: 28/09/2023
Word count: 506
They met in the playground, second grade, when he grew impatient and pushed her out of the way. He said it was his turn. She cried, and tattled on him. There was the start of their enmity.
By fourth grade they were vying for the position of top mathematician, both well ahead of their level and determined to beat the other. They didn’t care about anyone else, just each other. Each year, as they clawed their way slowly up school, they took it turn about: not deliberately, that was just the way it happened. By twelfth grade both had got it four times, and now ensued a bitter struggle. He didn’t hand in any English assignments, while she barely slept, and drank a lot of coffee.
Except when they were working at maths problems together, they pretended the other didn’t exist. Her second-favourite subject was English, and she despised him for skipping it.
In the end, he failed English and had to retake it, but had the vindictive pleasure of beating her to the top spot in maths by precisely one point. She rubbed it in that she’d be a year ahead of him at college, though. They both planned to take the same course.
The year passed; and once they were no longer at an equal level, oddly enough, most of their enmity was gone, and they worked together. Sometimes his marks were higher than hers, but neither grudged the other their small triumphs. They had worked out a semblance of friendship.
It came to her last year of college. He all but gave up his own course to help her with the last push; she had got into terrible sleeping habits, and drank nothing but extremely strong coffee. It was beginning to tell on her health.
But together they carried her over the finish line, and it came to graduation. He stood, clutching a large bouquet of flowers, and putting them down only to clap his hands raw when she graduated with the top marks.
“You’ll be doing this next year, I suppose,” she said, after.
He smiled. “I shall. And what will you do?”
“I was considering taking a gap year,” she admitted. “In fact I think I will. I’ve tired myself out rather.” Which was a fair statement, for she looked like a ghost. “We can keep studying together, though.”
“You look like you need a good long rest, not to bother with my coursework. Besides, it should be a walk in the park for me now, having studied all the same stuff with you all this time.” He was trying to be kind, but her expression changed and he did not understand it.
“Of course,” she said. “I understand. Good luck, then.” She smiled warmly. “I might see you around. Or I might not.”
For the first time, she embraced him; he clung to her for a moment, then let her go.
And as she walked away, she glanced back over her shoulder, and knew only then that she loved him.
Creature
Project: N/A
Dates written: 25/10/2023
Date published: 10/12/2023
Word count: 240
“And where would you find this creature?” Christina leaned nearer, eyes alight with excitement, but the dark-eyed man before her didn’t seem to mind.
“Why, everyone knows his location,” he said. “Just up the ridge there. But nobody visits him, for he is the harbinger of death.”
“How do you know he is there, if you never visit him?”
“I trained him, until he jumped the fence one day and never came back. And I do visit him.” A gust of wind swept in the partly open door, and blew out the lights; all except for the light he held, which cast his face in sudden and frightening shadow. “He is mine and I am his. He is the harbinger of death, as I said.”
Christina drew away again, heart hammering in her chest. “I – I don’t think I want to visit him, in that case.”
The man laughed. “Oh, you’ll visit him. You’ll get a chance to see him, up close. Isn’t that what you wanted?” Laughter surrounded her, the choir of a thousand insane voices, as the light he held was extinguished and all she could see was the faint glow of red in his eyes. “I thought you said you wanted to see the creature. You said you’d do anything to see him. Come on.”
He seized her hand and dragged her out of the door, her fingers trailing over the doorframe and unable to find purchase.
Inside and Out
Project: untitled Cinderella retelling
Dates written: 25/11/2023
Date published: 10/12/2023
Word count: 468
They met one day her stepmother sent her to buy potatoes. Dinner was supposed to be soon, but Griselda had taken a potato for her potato-gun without telling anyone, so she would go without at dinner if Cinder didn’t hurry.
There, in the market, filthy and with hair like a rat’s nest, Cinder saw a boy jump from the roof, landing on his feet and running without a break. Two liveried servants panted in his wake, but stopped at the roof.
“Your Highness,” called one, puffing.
He turned back to yell something, a grin stretching his handsome face, and in the process crashed into her. Apologies spilled from his lips as he bent to pick up the potatoes that had fallen. “I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t see you there,” he said, picking up the last potato and putting it in her outstretched arms. “Do you have a bag?”
“No,” she said, but what she really meant was ‘none except what I’m wearing’.
“It’s so easy to forget, isn’t it?” the boy said genially. “Look, I’ll buy you one.”
Too scared to object, Cinder watched as he pulled out coins and bought her a bag: not a potato-sack, but a cloth bag that was the most beautiful thing she had owned since her father died.
“Here, it’ll be easier to carry them in a bag than in your arms like that,” he said kindly. “D’you have far to go?”
She shook her head, then glanced at the sun. “I’d better go – my stepmother will be wondering where I am.”
“I’m sorry for keeping you,” the boy said, and smiled. “Take care of yourself. What’s your name?”
She hesitated, glanced around again. “Ella. Cinderella.”
“I’m Christopher, Kit to my friends.”
Cinder held out her hand, only remembering how grubby it was once she saw it before her. “Goodbye, Christopher.”
He shook her hand smilingly, making no comment on the ashes that now adorned his lily-white hand. “I said Kit, Ella.”
She grinned back. “Goodbye, then, Kit.”
Before she got back home, she hid the bag he had given her, so her stepmother never saw it. Every now and then in the years that followed she would go and look at it, and remember the boy who had cast a brief moment of sunshine into her life.
~
Kit knew who the beautiful stranger was the instant he saw her; the only thing that baffled him was how her stepmother and stepsisters didn’t recognise her. From the first moment he saw her as a youth, he knew she was beautiful inside and out, and that was why he had remembered her and waited for her.
~
For a reason they never explained, their wedding invitation had the apparently irrelevant line, Have courage and be kind, and you will be beautiful inside and out.
Letting Go
Project: N/A
Dates written: 30/10/2023
Date published: 10/12/2023
Word count: 278
One by one, she let them go.
The rope was the first to go. She burnt it, at midnight; a small, sputtering flame that reeked as it burned, like it was curling slowly into a ticking bomb. She felt like it was, too; but she watched it until nothing but pale ash remained, and then she left that in a pile and walked away.
Next she took the bottle of pills she had been saving for so long, and went to the lake, and poured them in, like white rain. Then she watched as they dissolved, until the gentle current picked up the last swirl of powder and it was gone. She wiped away her tears, and rinsed the bottle, shaking the water from it like teardrops.
After that, she took the brick from her room and put it back in the stack she had stolen it from. While she walked home, through the hot dusty noon, she thought about how beautiful the deep blue sky was.
The last, and hardest, to give up was a small package containing almost a hundred razor blades. But one day she took them out again, looked at them long, and then went and dug a grave, too small for anything other than the package, and when she had done she put them in and poured the dirt back, and stamped on it until even she could not have known exactly where to dig, though the marks of digging were still evident on the overturned earth.
One by one, she let them go.
And at last, when she held everything gently, she picked up the reins of life again, and went on.
In the Psych Ward
Project: N/A
Dates written: 09/12/2023
Date published: 10/12/2023
Word count: 207
One of the things that stuck with her forever after was the first time she looked in the mirror.
For so long, she’d seen a monster: covert glances out of eyes with too much white around them, disgust painted on a face that became daily more repulsive. At some point she stopped looking in the mirror. She was already alien enough in her own skin.
But this time, under the harsh hospital lights, with the fittings that clung to the wall and the rounded anti-harm edges, she finally looked at herself again.
She saw no monster, nothing sinister underneath her skin. All she saw was a pale, tired looking girl, and for a moment she loved her. It was only a moment; but the moment stayed for longer than the alien feeling, in the end. How could she be so needlessly cruel to a girl like that? All that girl needed was a hug, the sort you can melt into and forget your troubles for a moment. It wouldn’t last forever, but nor would the mindless hatred.
That memory kept her going for a long time. She was just a girl, after all, just like everyone else. She wasn’t the only one to feel like a monster.
The Forest
Project: N/A
Dates written: 14/12/2023
Date published: 14/12/2023
Word count: 471
First, there was a forest with no clearings.
Then there was a man with an axe; he selected the most promising trees, hacked them down, broke them into shapes he could use. There was a clearing.
In that clearing was a small house, made of fresh logs. It didn’t take very long to warp, letting in cold air where there should have been snug joins, but the man didn’t mind.
At some point the window got curtains hung in it, and a woman moved in to the small house. The man kept chopping down trees to add to the small house, and some he sold. A second small house appeared near the first. It, too, twisted and warped. It took a couple of winters before it lay desolate.
On a blustery winter night, a third person came to inhabit the house; a rather small, purple sort of person, who yelled until his lungs were tired. The woman would rock him in a makeshift cradle for hours at a time.
Time passed, and nobody came to join them in the forest. The small person grew up, and one day when he was tall and strong for his age he had a terrible argument with his mother. The small house quaked and trembled at his rage, and then he turned about and left, never noticing the way the house seemed to shimmer and curl around her.
The boy went to the city. But after a short time he found himself growing unaccountably weak unless he was in the park, with the trees. At last his anger cooled and he went back to the forest, growing stronger at every step.
Instead of finding his parents there, he found the house boarded up, except when he looked at it more closely, it seemed that the logs had no gap for door or windows. The boy frowned. He wondered where his parents had gone. He had not known they would ever leave the forest.
The boy broke into the house. It was untouched, just like it had been when he left, even to the spot of jam his mother had dropped on the floor. It looked sticky and fresh.
He cleaned things up, put them in order and settled into living there on his own. He did not notice the way the leaves whispered when he started the fire. Nor did he notice the trees shifting uneasily behind him.
One day he found the door was no longer there. Nor was the window. The boy did not panic; instead he brainstormed. This time he heard the rustling leaves. He sat in the corner and thought deeply about how to escape the building, and did not notice a fresh young shoot coming in the warped corner, slowly and carefully.
Then, there was a forest with no clearings.
Friendship, Like A Mirror’s Shards
Project: Hands Made For Gentleness
Dates written: 14/12/2023
Date posted: 14/12/2023
Word count: 1043
They stood as friends ready to be divided, and already feeling the divide in their souls.
“I’ll miss you,” said Anneka for the hundredth time.
“It’s only a couple of months,” said Sadie, in a voice that was supposed to be comforting and didn’t quite manage it. “It’ll be over before you know it!”
Anneka frowned and picked a daisy, tearing off the petals one by one. “It still feels like a long time. You’ve never gone away this long in my entire life.”
Sadie tried to smile, failed, and grabbed for Anneka instead. They clung to each other like each had found a port in the storm.
“Is it possible to love someone too much?” asked Anneka, voice wavering. “Maybe you’re being taken away because I care about you too much.” She always cared more about people than they cared about her; it was just a fact of life.
Sadie laughed. “Honey, no. We’re going for a holiday, it’s not – it’s not the end of the world, you know?”
Anneka tore the last petal off the daisy and dropped the stem. She wanted to say that it felt like it. She wanted to say that she loved Sadie more than anyone in the world. She wanted to ask her if she truly found her annoying.
She said nothing.
“But, listen, you’ve reminded me – I wrote a letter, and you mustn’t read it unless you’re terribly lonesome. Promise?”
“Promise.” Anneka received the dainty pink missive with eager hands and wished she’d written one too. “What does terribly mean? In this context.”
“I don’t know. Like you can’t bear it.”
“All right.” She put it in her pocket, feeling a little cheered up. “I’ll do my best.”
The time, as one might expect, passed. Anneka moped for a while, then decided to put her best face on and pretend she wasn’t broken up by Sadie’s absence. She walked and rode and practised a few things she’d been meaning to get around to for a long, long time. The letter burned in her pocket, and one day she put it in a drawer, underneath her clothes, and left it there. No matter how much she wanted to, she kept putting off reading it, in case she wanted it more later.
Once Sadie came back, she forgot about it.
Anneka pulled things out of her drawers in a hurry, mind whirling. She wasn’t going to bring everything, not right now; but she did need at least a couple of changes of clothing. She scrambled through the sorting to shove things into a small case, rather haphazardly, dumping other things in piles on the floor. When she came back for the rest, she’d clean it up. No need to get it all now, especially since Vaniah would be waiting for her.
She got to the bottom of the drawer and paused in surprise at a pink letter, inscribed in a child’s large hand with her own name. Memories came flooding back, and she wondered suddenly how Sadie was. They’d fallen out of touch last year, and Sadie had since shifted to a town four hours away. Despite their closeness as children, as adults they only retained a general sense of acquaintance. They didn’t really know each other now.
She must remember to write to Sadie and tell her of the wedding, probably send pictures of the ring and all that. Sadie had been interested in weddings as a child, liking the dress-up aspect of them despite not being interested in having one herself. Anneka wondered how she was doing with the law now. She should write and ask.
She opened the letter carefully, reading it despite the time she was taking doing so. By the end she was crying.
Dear Anneka,
I’m going to miss you. I hope you know how much you mean to me and always will. No matter what happens in our lives, we’ll still be a part of each other, won’t we? I think people are like smashed mirrors and we all pick up a bit of each other and reflect them. I thought you were the poetic one, but leavetaking brings out the poet in me, or something.
When you’re fearfully lonely, I hope you read this letter and remember how much I love you. Imagine me hugging you really tight right now. This is only a letter so I can’t, not really, but it can help, can’t it?
I think people underestimate how much little things can help. Letters, or telling people you were thinking of them, or any of that kind of thing. When you think about it, we’re really made up of all the little things, aren’t we? Life isn’t about the big choices – well, not completely – it’s about the everyday moments and the time we spent together and the laughter we shared. The little choices every moment, to choose friendship or apathy. Apathy is dangerous, Anneka. It’s the worst thing you can succumb to, I think. Even worse than actively wrong things, you know?
Letting people slip away is so easy and yet it’s the thing we must prevent above all else. It’s dangerous. I hope I don’t do the same with you, Anneka. I love you too much to let you go. (I wonder how much the people who do let one another walk away feel like that at the start anyway?)
(Surely having tried and having loved and having felt is enough sometimes. Surely sometimes you’re just not going to hold on to a friendship. Maybe it was worth it all the way along even if it isn’t forever. Treasure the moments regardless of their longevity, if they’re important.)
I don’t know. I get existential sometimes, you know? I like to write and I like to love and even more, I like to be loved. I still love you, Anneka. I will even if we get to the stage where we can’t tell each other. It’s still here inside me. Is that where it matters most?
Sadie
When she got to the home that would be hers from now on, Anneka’s first task was filling her drawers with clothing. She put the letter underneath, carefully, where she could read it again. Maybe someday she’d show Vaniah.
Faith
Project: Furnace of Hope
Dates written: 18/12/2023
Date posted: 18/12/2023
Word count: 458
TRIGGER WARNING FOR IMMEDIATE POST-SUICIDE ATTEMPT
One breath after another, as she stared at her hands.
She had seen them smeared with blood before. As a chronic skin-picker that was hardly surprising: nor was it surprising that her own blood had coated her hands before.
This time was different.
The bleeding was slowing, with steady pressure on it, as she tried to get her racing heart under control.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
That was… not something she had expected to have to think about. But it hadn’t been very well planned, had it? Hadn’t it been the impulse of an instant, and the work of an instant?
She leaned her head against the bench and groaned aloud. There was – pain.
And regret.
How would she look anyone else in the face again? Knowing what she had just done, had tried to do? God help me. Her name seemed suddenly ironic. Faith. The name her parents had given her in hopes of a loving, Godly daughter.
Would she call herself Godly anymore, really? With what she’d tried to do?
She pressed her hands to her face with a sob, forgetting for a moment the blood that coated them. She must look a sight, and not one she could let anyone who knew her see. Faith glanced at the wound, then averted her eyes, growing dizzy.
It was the first, and hopefully the last, time she tried something like this.
It wasn’t even like she had a mental illness or something. She was just impulsive, and sad. So sad.
What would Neil think if he saw her now? Would he care? (Had he ever cared about her?)
Faith put pressure on the wound again, sobs wracking her body. She wished she could undo it, and more than that she wished she could have Neil back. Her head hurt, especially where the staples were. Where had he gone, and why had he abandoned her after that? What if her mother was right? What if he had been doublecrossing her all along?
But she loved him. That fact, out of all of them, was the strongest.
Faith took a deep breath, then got up. She’d have to make tracks to a hospital sooner rather than later. With any luck Neil would be on placement there and she would see him again.
This was something that must never reach her family’s ears. The treatment, only recently pioneered, that could remove all trace of scarring would serve to hide the evidence permanently. Anyway, it was winter, so long sleeves would cover it while it healed, and any appointments she had to make could be covered up by the appointments she had for the aftermath of the accident anyway.
It was going to be okay. She had to trust and – have faith.
Patience in Recovery
Project: Patience stories
Dates written: 04/01/2024
Date posted: 04/01/2024
Word count: 625
They said she was full of hope, all that time.
They said a lot of lies. I knew because I’d listened at the door, when they didn’t know I was in the room at all. I’d overheard the doctors talking, and I knew what they said.
They weren’t particularly happy with the way things were going. Nobody was quite sure if her voice would recover properly, because of how long she’d been breathing smoke. Mine recovered just fine, and I wasn’t hurt as bad as Patience was.
It was irony, I guess, when you thought about it, that her name was Patience, because now we all had to wait to make sure she’d get better. The doctors had talked to her, and she wrote back answers (carefully, and with her right hand, because the left was still in plaster).
They told me she was brimming with hope, like the way my eyes had been when I woke up in hospital and they told me what had happened. She was ready and waiting to get better.
But I heard them discussing worriedly among themselves, how she was lying there and not actually wanting to get better, like it was too hard. Her body was battered, and seems her mind was, too.
I don’t understand. She brightened up a lot when I first came in, and I thanked her for saving me, and she smiled, just a bit, and made a thumbs-up gesture. She was awfully white, and made the sheets look skin colour, and there were all sorts of bulky dressings everywhere, but she whispered, in her hoarse voice, that it was “worth it”. I can still hear that if I think about it.
They said she’ll walk again, all that sort of thing, but they’re worried about the way her hand was damaged, and the amount of burns she got. They don’t know if she’ll be able to comfortably knit again.
Knitting is her safe thing, her biggest hobby; what would Patience do if she couldn’t knit?
She told me she’d knit me a jumper when she was out of there, and that was as good as telling me she loved me, for Patience. Seems she warmed up to me at last.
I was trying not to complain; you know how it is, though, sometimes? When you’re living in a house and someone else in the house doesn’t like your existence. I guess it was pretty sudden, and Patience is a cagey old dear, but it doesn’t feel nice.
Mum wasn’t cheerful anymore, not how she used to be. Her expression was worn and like she hadn’t slept in a week. I heard her crying one time after she and Dad met with the doctors. Then she and Dad got into an argument, the worst argument I’ve ever heard, and that’s saying something. It was just words, but words are important. Some of the things they called each other weren’t very nice, and I shan’t reproduce them.
Grief can tear apart a family. I hope it doesn’t ours. I hope Patience gets better soon, and all better, because otherwise I don’t know what we’ll do. She’s important, though I’m sure she doesn’t realise how important. She better get better quick. I pray for her every night, and I wouldn’t like to tell her how much I cry about it. She wouldn’t be in trouble if she hadn’t saved me. Then again, they say I’d probably be dead.
I guess she figured I was worth saving. Guess I’d better buck up and be someone worth saving.
Get better soon, Patience, and I hope when you’re better I can show you how much I care, in a less obnoxious way to how I did before. Rhona out.
A Summer Walk
Project: N/A
Dates written: 10/01/2024
Date posted: 10/01/2024
Word count: 599
When she stepped outside it was grey and cloudy and dull, just how she liked. It suited her mood exactly, and suited her current plan.
She sort of half noticed the trees on her route: they were so pretty, but she didn’t have much mind to pay attention to them. It was the season of flowering gums, and there was a particularly fine red one on her way. She paused a moment to contemplate it.
Then she touched her pocket as if in reassurance, and went on.
Presently she got to the stream. It was loud, full from the last few days’ heavy rainfall. The stepping stones were still damp from being covered while the stream swelled beyond its banks. Her shoes were covered in mud.
She sat on the rock at the edge of the stream, and stared blankly at the water flowing over a rock in the middle of the stream. Leaves drifted downstream, then swooped over the rock and were gone, tumbling.
After a while, she reached for her pocket and took out the thing she had carried for the whole walk. A brief glint of sunlight struck it, shining. She turned it over and over in her hands, deep in thought. Once, she took her pulse, then ran her fingers further up her arm, seeking by touch where the artery lay. Still she held the blade immobile, occasionally tilting it so that the sun caught it.
At last – at long, long last – she took out her handkerchief and wrapped it in it, so she could not see it. Then she took a deep breath and put it back in her pocket.
She had thought of dropping it in the stream, but what if others saw it, and were similarly tempted?
Instead, she got up and walked carefully across the stream, arms held wide for balance. Despite that she nearly slipped, and the thought crossed her mind that it would be ironic if she fell, hit her head and drowned.
A long time ago, she had found native strawberries not far away from there – small, fairly tasteless things with a vaguely sweet flavour and not much else. She went in search of them now, climbing a steep hill while looking attentively for any flashes of red. She saw none until the very top; there at last her patience was rewarded, and she picked seven, crunching them slowly and listening to the birds.
It was only then that she realised: it was good to be alive, on that summer day, crunching the seeds from native strawberries, hearing the stream in the distance and watching the swaying of the gum trees. It was good, to walk on a day that was growing sunny but not painfully so, to see the clouds drift through the deep blue sky, to take deep breaths of summer-scented air.
It was good, to see a man come smiling up his driveway, and to have him pause while she buried her hands in his dog’s fur, and the dog licked her hands and smiled up at her. It was good to watch a couple guide their small children, on bikes a great deal too large for them, one to each child, conversing in an unholy amalgamation of English and French. It was good to hear the birds, and the kookaburras – laughing jackasses as they had been called in time past – vying in spirited duet.
It was good: it was very good. She spread her arms wide, as if she could embrace the whole world if she tried hard enough, and laughed for sheer joy.
Accusation
Project: N/A
Dates written: 24/01/2024
Date published: 24/01/2024
Word count: 332
“You killed me,” she says, and moves nearer.
He takes a step back. “It was for your own good.”
“You killed me!” A spectral wind sweeps him off his feet, but he twists and lands somehow, panting.
“You should know by now,” he gasps between hurried breaths, “I don’t kill people unless I have to.”
“You could have left me to die!” she shouts. This time, she picks him up and throws him; he hits the ground hard, the breath knocked out of him. “Instead,” she croons in his ear, “you killed me!”
Ice blasts him, and he tries and fails to inhale.
“I thought you loved me! I thought you even, maybe, liked me!”
This time he gets his breath, but doesn’t try to regain his feet. “I do! I do love you!”
“Liar!” Icicles bloom on the rock wedged in his side, and he gasps again, this time with pain.
“If you had died naturally,” he says, “you would have died for good and all. Instead, I – “
“You killed me!” she screamed in his ear.
He bares his teeth, fangs shining. “Not my fault you’re apparently immune to being turned! I tried to make you a vampire like me: but since you didn’t disclose your ancestry to me, I didn’t know you were one of those who will be turned into a ghost instead of a vampire!”
She pulls away and everything’s quiet and warm for a moment. In a small voice, she says, “You tried to make me a vampire? You tried to save me?”
“I did! Believe me,” he pleads.
The spectre eases closer to him, but this time she appears friendly rather than hostile. “Get up and look me in the eye, and tell me the truth.”
When he repeats what he’d previously said, she pulls herself together into a very small spectre, glowing but not painfully. “I… jumped to conclusions,” she says. “Friends?”
He stares down at the spectral hand. “I can’t touch that.”
“Oh. Right.”
Wounded
Project: Patience stories
Dates written: 25/01/2024
Date published: 25/01/2024
Word count: 651
For the thirteenth time since she’d left the light of the smeared lantern, Patience stumbled and nearly fell. She was growing lightheaded; good sense would have dictated that she rang triple zero, got them to look at her arm and stop the bleeding. But all she could think of was Nathan. Nathan would help her.
It was already growing hazy in her mind: the sudden violence, the flash of the knife, the yelling. The blinding pain as she turned and ran. The running that had slowed down to a stumbling walk. She pressed her other hand against the wound, but it was still bleeding.
She wasn’t far away from Nathan’s house, though. Again she stumbled, took a deep breath, went on again. She’d get there, though it might take a while.
Some length of time later, she was staring up at his house and realising she actually had no idea how to do this. Eventually Patience rang the doorbell, watching blood drip slowly to the ground. She thought it was slowing, maybe.
To her relief, he answered it, whitening as he saw her. “Patience? What on earth—dear heart, what’s happened to you?” Putting his arm around her, guiding her inside. “What happened? You’re hurt. Do you need an ambulance? You’re shaking.” The barrage of questions was overwhelming, and she was silent.
When they got inside, and he had guided her to a chair at the dining room table, she leaned back in relief. After a brief, hard glance he pulled her sleeve back; Patience did not look. It was a mess.
“Who did this to you?” His voice was warm and comforting, and pulled her back to reality. “What happened, Patience?”
She tried to breathe, and instead sobbed. Nathan put an arm around her. “Hey, you don’t have to answer anytime soon,” he said gently. “I can take care of this and you can tell me later.”
“No,” she got out, “it was Chloe, Nathan—she—she—” Again her voice stuck. She couldn’t revisit it: not right now.
“I see,” he breathed, and his shoulders loosened a little. Only then did Patience realise what it might have looked like to him.
“I—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” he assured her gently. “It wasn’t. Is Chloe okay?”
“I—I think so? I don’t know.” She sobbed again. “I ran, Nathan. I don’t know if she’s okay.”
He was putting pressure on the wound now; Patience hissed. “Sorry….” he murmured in her ear. “It’s okay, though. You don’t have to feel guilty.”
“I argued with her,” she said, flinching again and glancing down at her arm. He was using the sleeve of his own jumper on it. “I shouldn’t have riled her up.”
“It’s still not your fault,” repeated Nathan. “Now, look—I’m going to get my parents, if that’s okay with you, and we’ll call an ambulance. It’s pretty deep—I don’t like it.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry I came to you. I just couldn’t think of anything else.”
“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’m glad you came, Patience. I’m glad you thought of me for safety.”
“‘Course I did,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes. “Nathan, I’m really sleepy—”
“I know you are,” he said, shifting one hand. A moment later she heard him on the phone, sharp and clinical and worried; nothing like the gentle, beloved boy he had been a moment before. “—Yes, she absolutely needs an ambulance. Look, it’s deep, and it’s bleeding despite the pressure I’m putting on it—”
She laid her head on the table and sobbed again, covering her face with her free hand.
“I’d get you a hot drink,” he said, after, caressing her hair, “but I think the ambulance is going to be here too soon for you to enjoy it. When they’ve fixed you up, I’ll make you one, okay?”
“Love it,” said Patience, and leaned against him. “Looking forward to it.”
Vein
Project: N/A
Dates written: 03/02/2024
Date published: 03/02/2024
Word count: 292
She felt, very strongly, that she should be afraid, but apart from the ‘should’, there was nothing. Too quietly for anyone else to hear (even if they were listening), she whispered, “I nearly sliced a vein just now.” The words felt wrong in her mouth. Surely if that was true, she’d be feeling it?
Emotionlessly, she watched the wound, and that was the moment she knew without a doubt: she was insane, but not in the cutesy, social-media form of self hatred (but too mild to cause lasting damage) and lying curled in a dark room, or the wild insanity of a stereotyped straitjacket. This was a quiet, total insanity, too small for others to notice, but large enough to swallow her life, and produce a twisted version of herself that she never wanted to see again.
At last she got up, cleaned it with paper towel (she knew that she wasn’t supposed to use that, but that was what was there) and covered it. She stared at nothing, felt nothing, sensed nothing, while an eternity hung beyond her reach.
Presently she sobbed, brief and wrenching, and then watched the wall again while the tears dried. Somewhere inside her she still wished she had gone through with it, less than a millimetre deeper – found the vein, accidental though it was, and had to tell someone or suffer in dire straits. She wished someone would notice. She was too good at hiding it.
But she did not deserve to get help. She knew what she deserved.
She no longer knew which thoughts were hers and which were not, which were good and which were not. She was insane.
She wiped her eyes, plastered on the mask again and went to join the others.
Ariadne
Project: N/A
Dates written: 29/02/2024
Date published: 29/02/2024
Word count: 1412
I’d been hunting for a long time before I found them.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not just a travelling mercenary, ready to kill anyone that’ll get me cash. I pick and choose my jobs, and they mostly don’t involve killing. This one was a heartbroken man looking for his wife and kids. It wasn’t clear if they’d been abducted or if they went willingly.
Turned out they’d gone willingly. She was under another man’s protection now. It only took a couple of hours bargaining, a sizeable amount of cash in hand, and I was on my way back to report that she’d been abducted. Typical stuff in my profession. Barely worth thinking about
On my way back, I was resting in an inn overnight when something knocked at the door. I wasn’t used to being the only person apart from the innkeeper, like I was that day, so I lay there and waited while they knocked. At last I got up and opened the door. It was a fairy, looking exceedingly nervous.
“Are you the landlord?” she asked. Her voice was high and anxious.
“Nope,” I said. “Just another traveller. I’m sure if you pay your dues the landlord will accept you.” We’re not fairyphobic, not in these parts.
“What’s your name?” she asked, appearing a little less nervous as she hastened inside and took off her coat.
I wasn’t going to fall for that trick. “Doesn’t matter. What’s yours?”
“Doesn’t matter either, I guess,” she said, looking more downcast than she had any right to look. Either she was trying to play my emotions, or she was really new to being a fairy and didn’t know how to fairy properly yet.
“Who’s this?” asked the landlord, appearing a moment later and scowling at her. “What’s your name? I need it for the books.”
She smiled, and said, “Ariadne,” although nobody there believed her. No point really. The only thing that told us was that she might have a passing friendship with spiders, or maybe weaving. Weaving webs of deception, most likely.
I said my name was Job, as it very clearly wasn’t, and she pretended to believe me. The landlord straight up said his name was Mister Landlord. Nobody laughed.
“Well, Job,” she said, as I was preparing to lay my weary head down again, “were you looking for another job?”
Not one from a fairy. That’s danger right there. They can always revert to their previous form (walrus) and crush you if they want to. “Nope. Still in the middle of a job.” Then I knew I shouldn’t have said that. The fairy who called herself Ariadne was going to leverage that little bit of information.
“I was just wondering if I could find a mercenary to do a job for me, that’s all,” she said, and looked all sad again.
“What sort of job?” I said, even though I wasn’t going to accept it.
She named a few names, a few particulars, then offered me thirteen Orbs in repayment. Fairies don’t do payment like us humans do, you see. Thirteen Orbs was a pretty hefty price.
Can’t say I wasn’t tempted, either. It wasn’t a particularly big job, and it involved the man I was on my way to tell his wife was pinched, as well. Wouldn’t have to suss out a new patch. It didn’t involve killing, either: only handing over to the Fairy Courts. I don’t know what he’d done, but the Fairy Courts were really wanting to find the dude.
I don’t really know why they couldn’t just find him themselves, but something about the Fairy Realm versus the Human Realm meant that they couldn’t just walk up to his front door. Nope, they had to get a human to bring him.
And Ariadne wanted me to bring him to her, at this inn.
Well. It probably wouldn’t be hard. Did I want to doom a fellow man to the fairies, and all that? I’d thought about it many times before, though it’d usually been through another human that I’d been offered the job, not directly with a fairy. Every single time I’d refused the offer.
This time, though….
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get him.” I was careful not to use his nickname, because she had his full name but not his nickname, otherwise she really could have dispensed with me. “In exchange for thirteen Orbs.”
“Done.” Ariadne sighed with apparent relief. “In fact I’ll come with you, if you’ll have me, Job.”
I frowned at that. Why’d a fairy want to accompany me, unless she thought I was untrustworthy, or had some other plan up her sleeve?
“Why?” I asked, point-blank. She’d never answer it truly.
She didn’t; she gave me some bunkum about wanting to see the Human Realm, never said anything about whatever her real goal was. I ignored it, except to file it away under ‘things that aren’t true’, which to be fair was a pretty big category by now.
Anyway, I agreed after a while of back and forth, and we set out the next day, me and the fairy who called herself Ariadne. I didn’t make any conversation the first day, and we bedded down at a deserted inn the next night. I was careful to avoid saying William David Annersley’s nickname (Billy), because even though she could guess it, if she didn’t know it she couldn’t use the power of it.
Well, we got back to his house with a minimum of fuss over the next fortnight. She sure was a talker, but she hid in the bushes while I went inside and lied through my teeth about his beloved wife and children. He cried, gave me my payment and that was that.
“Did you want to come outside, see the fresh air?” I said, with a companionable pat on the back. “Remember all the good things in life, you know.”
Ariadne probably had a web ready for him at this point. It seemed the sort of thing she would do.
He sniffled. “Maybe. I don’t know. Will I never see dear Agnes again?”
“Probably not,” I said reassuringly. “But you’ll get through this.” I avoided using his nickname for obvious reasons.
“When we got married, Billy and Aggie Annersley, I was so happy,” he sobbed. “And now….”
“And now you’re not. I know. It sucks.” I was never one for emotional talk.
“Billy!” uttered Ariadne, rising from the bushes as he walked outside. “Billy, I need you to come to the Fairy Realm immediately. A panacea for your soul.”
He blinked uncomprehendingly. “Why?” he said at last.
“Because we want nothing but the best for you,” she said persuasively. I could have sworn she batted her eyelashes.
“It’s a trap,” I said, Thirteen Orbs be whatevered. “She’s trying to take up the Fairy Court against you.”
“No, I’m not,” contradicted Ariadne. “I’m just trying to bring justice to be served.”
That was a lie, like everything she’d said before.
“What’s your real name?” she asked.
Thankfully I got in just as Billy was opening his mouth. “Job, like I told you. Billy doesn’t know it.”
He was doomed to the Fairy Realm anyway, but if she got my name maybe I was too. Shouldn’t have taken on a fairy, you know. Should’ve just ignored her.
“But I do,” he started, and I turned on him.
“Shut up,” I said snappily. A good line of dialogue, if I say so myself. Shut the man up, anyway. “My name to Ariadne is Job.”
He raised his eyebrows, but had the sense to remain silent.
“I don’t want to harm you,” she said, and suddenly added in the silence, “Look, I’ll swear an oath! I’ll swear an oath I want to harm neither of you!”
I blinked at that.
“I really don’t,” she said. “This is exonerating Billy, not charging him.”
Not sure I believed it, but with the possibility of an oath it was faintly possible the fairy was in earnest.
“What am I charged with?”
She spouted off in Fairy, and we listened, only catching about half of what she said. She had to repeat it several times. My Fairy was pretty rusty, and Billy’s was worse.
“Why on earth?” he said.
“Come with me and see,” said Ariadne, extending her hands to each of us. For some stupid reason I reached out my hand and took hers for the first time.
And then everything got very quiet.
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L. E. Morgan, Author 